Kenyan bowler Peter Ongondo (L), Elijah Otieno (C) delivers a ball watched by Steve Tikolo (R) during a training session at The Eden Gardens Cricket Stadium in Kolkata. Retiring Kenyan all-rounder Tikolo said Saturday that qualifying for the 2003 World Cup semi-finals in South Africa was the highlight of his one-day career.

By Manoj Vatsyayana

Kolkata: Mar 20, 2011

Retiring Kenyan all-rounder Steve Tikolo said Saturday that qualifying for the 2003 World Cup semi-finals in South Africa was the highlight of his one-day career.

Tikolo will make his last World Cup appearance when his team clash with Zimbabwe at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens on Sunday, with both sides out of the reckoning for quarter-final berths. The all-rounder, who has figured in five World Cups, has scored 3,411 runs with three hundreds and 24 half-centuries and taken 94 wickets with his off-spin in 133 one-day internationals.

“The 2003 semi-final was a great achievement for the Kenyan team and myself as a captain and beating the West Indies at Pune (in the 1996 World Cup in India) is also one of the highlights,” said Tikolo. “It is nice to be playing (my last match) at Eden Gardens. I remember my first game here against India which was something special, with a crowd of over 80,000,” added Tikolo, 39.

“It’s an emotional moment for me and I would like to go out on a positive note.” The Kenyan, who plans to take up coaching, said he regretted not getting the chance to play Test cricket. “That is one thing I would have liked to do, play Test cricket.” Kenya captain Jimmy Kamande said his team were keen to win the match for the veteran all-rounder.

“He is a legend. He is the man actually who made me play one-day international cricket and he is the one who made us qualify for the first time in the 1996 World Cup,” he said. Zimbabwe have earned just two points in a disappointing tournament for them and Kenya are pointless after five matches. The Kenyan skipper said he was disappointed over his Australian counterpart Ricky Ponting’s remarks that the World Cup would be better if the smaller nations were excluded.

“What is disappointing is that someone like Ricky Ponting saying that associates don’t need to be here (at the World Cup),” said Kamande. Ponting said cricket’s showpiece event would be a better tournament if the smaller nations were excluded, but also acknowledged the need to grow the game around the world.

The next World Cup in 2015 will feature just 10 teams, down from the current 14, meaning it will almost certainly be the preserve of the Test sides.